west berkshire

A great night out with friends, birthday celebrations, had a baby, got engaged, honeymoon or the holiday of a lifetime, visited an elderly relative, seen your best friend off at the airport?

You probably grabbed your smartphone or point and click camera to take some memorable pictures to keep, to create those amazing memories.

These moments of life are precious, something to keep for posterity, treasures to look back on in years to come; so what do you do with them?

Well, judging by the number cries for help on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks, too many people never bother to do anything beyond leaving these irreplaceable images on the phone or stored on the SD card in the camera.

All those treasured moments and sentimental occasions could be lost forever, if your phone or card is lost, damaged, stolen or corrupted.

Someone I know, just had one 64 Gb SD memory card, which they used in their camera to record important business images; they never uploaded them to a computer, so when the card suddenly stopped working it was a disaster. They were stuck, there was no copy, no back up, so when the card was corrupted the only way to get access to the pictures was by employing an expensive recovery company, and even then only some of the images could be recovered.

As a professional photographer, I have to ensure all my images are securely and safely stored, not only for my own credibility, but in the case of some of my work, because of client confidentiality, so it really surprises me when I hear stories of enthusiasts and amateurs who store their images on camera cards, instead of uploading them to a computer hard-drive or to a cloud facility, like Flickr or Dropbox .

Don’t put all your eggs in one basket, is an old fashioned proverb, but it stands good for the digital age too.

Always make sure you upload your precious photos and videos to somewhere safe, with a backup and check that the backup works.

If the picture’s worth taking, please keep it safe and don’t end up putting impassioned pleas on Facebook and Twitter like this poor person:

“…Lost an old black Samsung phone at boot-sale this morning, broken screen really not worth anything, but full of very sentimental pictures from Xmas and daughter being born…”

Professionally, I always use small capacity camera storage cards, rather than those with massive space, that way you’re less likely to lose everything.

When I use my smartphone to take pictures and these are usually the sentimentally important ones, they always automatically upload to Dropbox, a great solution if you need to be sure that your images are safe from harm.

With more and more people buying merchandise online, this is a question of fact, rather than a derogatory commentary on your sanity.

Buying products online will always present extra challenges compared to real life shopping, you can only use two of your five senses to make that crucial decision whether the purchase is right for you.

Because you can’t touch it, you can’t smell it and you certainly can’t taste it, you’re left to rely on eyes and ears before making that final click.

Touch is the reward for the “high street” shopper, they love to feel and handle the goods appreciating the texture; how rough or smooth it is, relishing and enjoying the sensual curves of an object, testing the weight, measuring the size and feeling the quality.

Our sense of smell, although dwarfed by many other members of the animal kingdom, brings immense pleasure to those who buy in the physical shop, smelling the richness of leather, the fragrance of cologne or the pungency of a ripe cheese, all helping to make shopping a pleasurable experience for so many people.

Finally, we come to taste, probably the most difficult sense to convey visually

Taking a bite out of your monitor or keyboard, will just leave you crunching plastic, most certainly an uninspiring prospect, but even Google haven’t yet come up with a way of conveying flavour over the internet.

Happily for us all, the human brain is an incredibly powerful sensory organ which uses the sophistication of its memory banks to create imagined taste and smell, simply stimulated by looking at a picture, remembering and recalling flavours and aromas we associate with a visual image.

Imagine the acidity of a succulent, juicy, slice of lemon and your mouth starts to water, see a crumpled and discarded sock lying on the floor and the abstract odour can overwhelm.

This is why getting the images right on an ecommerce website is so incredibly important and probably explains why 31% of shoppers in the UK visit and research the high street before purchasing online and 34% research online before visiting a real shop to confirm these missing senses, according to a survey by Deloitte for Ebay.

So when a potential customer clicks on a thumbnail it’s essential that they as much visual information as possible from clear, sharp and legible pictures of the product with plenty of views from different angles.

Clicking on a thumbnail image the expectation is to see a high quality and detailed photo of what you want to buy, but when the subsequent picture opens failing to show anything other than a badly pixelated smudge, or the photos are from an insufficient number of angles or just aren’t close enough to show important detail; the chances are they’ll just move on to another site.

By giving your visitor a memorably good experience, providing as much visual information as possible will keep them on your page, make them keen to buy and hopefully return and recommend the site to friends.

As a professional product photographer I know and understand the importance of all visual media on ecommerce websites, whether photos or video and how important it is to exceed your customer’s expectations, so if you have a website in need of pictures that will do just that, please give me a call or for video contact my colleagues at Dudleigh Films.

As a professional photographer my initial reaction to hearing this news was to hold up my hands in horror and view this as another nail in the profession’s already snuggly fitting coffin lid.

But having considered this for a while, my opinion has changed, with the realisation that now anyone with a non-commercial requirement can have unlimited access to the amazing array of pictures in Getty’s vast resource, this means that commercial companies will be reluctant to share photographs, that they will be paying to use, with any Tom, Dick or Harriet, especially with no control how the picture is used and what associations may be made with those images.

From big corporates to SMEs, protecting a company’s public persona is regarded as one of the most important factors in its relationship with clients, therefore any unfortunate conflict of image use with another user sharing the same pictures could have both serious financial and credibility repercussions, and it may no longer be viable for them to continue using generically sourced visual material.

If this is the case, and I’m sure that in many instances it will be, these companies will be looking to employ professional photographers to take bespoke pictures of their products and environments, providing complete control over usage.

By employing professionals, they will be not only protecting the integrity of their businesses, but creating new original material to enhance their sales process and entice their customers, also guaranteeing high quality work for the future.

Imagine how annoying and expensive it is for the supplier you bought from, when your dissatisfaction is about to start costing him time and money, on the returns process, and in some instances, his reputation.

Owning an ecommerce business is an exciting and low overhead way to trade as a retailer and it works beautifully as long as what you’re selling is exactly what the consumer wants, but if the product comes in different sizes, shapes or types, and add in the “fussy nature” of some customers, that brilliant business, can become a nightmare.

The often quoted cliché of “making it easy for the customer to buy”, should always be paramount in the seller’s mind and can be solved quickly and easily by making sure the customer has as much information about the product, including high quality photography, showing detailed images from various angles, especially size and shape.

Ordering online from some ecommerce websites can be extremely hit and miss, in fact what you see is very often not what you get, because of the poor quality photos and inadequate description, especially when the pictures on the site are not always of the branded product you’re expecting or looking for.

Sometimes the packaging may be different, but the contents aren’t, or in the case of counterfeit goods, vice versa.

This also increases that niggling doubt, which invariably occurs just after the pay button has been clicked, that it may not be the exact item needed or that possibly the description itself doesn’t match, even though the illustration looks correct.

For the vendor it’s essential that website photos of their merchandise are, “as described”, otherwise this will lead to an increase in returns for the company, frustration and irritation for customers.

In a shop the customer can usually pick the product up and prod it, poke it, squeeze or stroke it, examine it closely and even open the box to check the contents match the picture on the outside. They can compare items on the shelf and scrutinise similar models or types of product, but online it could be just a picture of the outside of the box or a very poor, low resolution image, which becomes a mass of pixelated mush without any visual information, when they click to enlarge.

Many companies now routinely take their own pictures for the web, using anything from a mobile phone to a point and click camera and for much of the time this will be fine, but the quality of the photos reflects not only on the product, but how the customer views the seller’s reputation.

As a specialist product photographer my clients rely on my expertise to make their products look great and provide all the information a customer requires to make a buying decision.

One of my clients produced replacement parts for a domestic appliance but there were various sizes produced which led to lots of returns. My solution was to produce a scaled, grid overlay of squares so the end user just counted the squares and knew they were getting exactly what they wanted.

If you need to reduce the number of returns from your ecommerce site or want your customer to be in no doubt about what they’re buying, talk to a professional product photographer now.

Everyday things are not always the way they appear; May’s Puzzle picture may well be something you look at often but don’t really notice.
My newsletter this month is all about Focus and how you can help keep your photos sharp and clear – Please sign up in the column on the right of your screen now

April’s Puzzle picture illustrates how easy it is to overlook the obvious.
My newsletter this month is all about Light and how its different qualities can affect your photos – Please sign up now – For the solution just click on the image.

I first watched ‘firewalking’ in 1962 on a black and white television during one of David Attenborough’s early wildlife documentaries when he visited a remote tribe who used it as a right of passage into adult life.

How could anyone walk on red hot coals without burning the soles off their feet? To a twelve year old this was quite extraordinary and I have to say left a question in my mind which has never gone away.

50 years on I now know the answer, because I’ve done it and it’s all thanks to business networking and a chance meeting with Tracey Miller and her partner George Swift who run a motivation and coaching business called Bigger, Brighter, Bolder.

I suppose we all have a ‘bucket list’ and meeting up with Tracey has given me the chance to cross something off mine and experience a couple of the most exhilarating moments of my life.

When she told me that George was a qualified Firewalking instructor I needed to know more and that’s why I ended up sitting in a room with seven other ‘mad fools’ at the Regency Park Hotel in Thatcham in a seminar that would culminate in walking across red hot coals.

As we sat and listened and self analysed our reasons for being there and what we wanted to get out of the experience, George took us through an emotional roller coaster of highs and lows of our lives and how these influence self esteem and confidence building.

Raking over the coals

After about 2 hours we all went outside to see the fire being lit and begin to understand the magnitude of what was going to happen.

Back inside we were all mentally prepared for the firewalk but George had another challenge for us before the big one, each one of us would break an archer’s arrow simply by placing the point in the soft part of your throat with the other end wedged against a block of wood and walking onto it. Testing how strong the shaft of this arrow was by placing it between two hands and pushing was quite alarming especially when I realised the metal point would be in the most vulnerable part of my neck.

It seemed strange putting on protective goggles to save my eyes from damage when I was about to stab myself in the throat but in fact we all successfully met the challenge without injury.

With time now ticking and the fire outside reaching its hottest point the time had arrived to face the great challenge.

A mound of red hot embers greeted us and James, one of George’s fellow instructors, began to prepare the fire bed by shovelling these onto the turf. Still glowing red, a laser directed thermometer checked the temperature and gave a reading of 1300 degrees Celsius.

The fire awaits

The moment had now arrived and carefully following our instructions, one by one we walked confidently over the coals, about 4 steps, into the supporting arms of George and having any pieces of ash rinsed of with a hose.

What did it feel like, my memory was not of heat but of the sort of crunch you get walking on deep snow, yet I had walked over red hot coals which by now were around 800 degrees and still had skin on my feet and no blisters.

Knowing I may not get the opportunity again, I walked a second time and in fact when fresh coals from the fire were added to bring the temperature back up I walked a third time and myself a sneaky look down at my feet on the red glowing coals, to see what I was doing.

I walk the coals

This was a truly momentous challenge and the empowerment I achieved with that first step onto the coals cannot be adequately described in words.

How could I have expected when six years ago my good friend Nigel Morgan of Morgan PR introduced me to the power of business networking for my commercial photography business it would have led me to achieve something so personally amazing.

I’m pretty sure that when Google made their You Tube video to promote the search and hashtag improvements to Google+ they had no intention of offending their audience but the careless use of hands and fingers is something all photographers and indeed videographers need to be aware of.

Is this what Google really think about their customers or should they be more aware of hand gestures and how they are interpreted?

Nearly all professional photographers will have encountered the character in the back row of a group shot casually giving a two fingered salute which sometimes escapes the eagle eye of the editor and gets published but this slip by Google illustrates how important it is to check your pictures and videos before you publish them.

Some people use their hands in an expressive way and used properly this can be a powerful addition to any visual presentation but we need to be aware of how these movements are seen by the viewer.

When I first looked at this video my unconscious mind was suddenly jolted by what I thought I’d seen on screen; now some would say any offence is in the eye of the beholder and maybe my mind is not as clean as it might be, but I can’t be alone in being momentarily shocked by what I thought Google was saying to me.

The lesson from this has to be make sure you examine any picture or video carefully before you publish, and always get several other people to look at it too in case, like me, their minds are not as innocent as they would like.

Anyone in business will tell you that the most important route to success is going the extra mile and keeping the customer happy by giving them what they think they want.

As a commercial photographer I know this better than most since in the digital age everyone’s a photographer and the majority of clients have a preconceived idea of how they want to look or how their product should be presented.

By listening to what they expect and guiding them around the practical obstacles I get the chance to build a relationship and show them the value of using a professional expert and establishing the magic of rapport.

This kind of personal attention is what sets small business apart from the impersonal multi-nationals who generally seem to adopt the attitude of we’ll give you what we want to, not what you need.

Having spent yesterday afternoon waiting for a British Gas engineer to carry out a routine central heating inspection; don’t you love the way they give time slots and then just before it’s due to elapse ring to say they can’t get there.

I got a call at 10 to 6 in the evening, apologising that they hadn’t been able to fit me in and offering me the first call of a 2 hour slot the next morning.

Accepting that “stuff happens” and it must be difficult to schedule so many jobs I agreed but as my allotted time disappears into the distance, I guess I’ve been stood up again.

The trouble is that this promise was pure British Gas “hot air”; they hadn’t told the engineer what they had agreed with me, so his work sheet said between 8 am and noon, he finally turned up at 10-15am, not his fault.

The main lesson we can all learn is not to make promises you can’t keep and certainly don’t lie, always be aware of the damage failing to keep them can result in.

I know that as a small business I always try to go the extra mile and give added value to my customers, if big business replicated this attitude people may be inclined to spend more with them and growth would begin to return to the economy.

The other lesson is when you do mess up, and it happens; make sure that your apology is sincere and any action necessary is prompt. “I’ll get my supervisor to call you”, just doesn’t cut it especially when they don’t bother to ring back.

Why do these utility companies spend so much on telephone cold calling and doorstep selling when they can’t supply what they offer, my list is growing Talk – Talk, British Gas, all credit to BT who at least try to resolve complaints with BT Care.

Maybe these large corporations should be buying their customer relations training from the small businesses that know how to treat their valuable clients properly.

My good friend Nigel Morgan at Morgan PR frequently posts about large organisations ignoring the power of social media and how great an impact this can have on reputation if you ignore Linkedin, Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and the myriad of other social networks your shareholders could be exceedingly unhappy.

In some ways I’m grateful that my time waiting in for British Gas hasn’t been entirely wasted and I’ve written this blog post.

Five minutes before I left, Nigel rang me and suggested I bring my laptop so that he could tweet pictures as I took them, so dashing out of the door I grabbed what I thought I’d need.

Not knowing if the venue had wi-fi available I planned to shoot using a DSLR and upload to the computer, do a quick tweak and resize them and pass them on a USB stick to Nigel so that he could integrate them as the questions were answered.

What I hadn’t expected was that the venue had set up a stage in a drama studio with thick black curtains as a backdrop and incredibly high black painted ceiling, and very low lighting levels.

I immediately realised my chances of using available light were nil and with nothing to bounce flash off I had no alternative but to use flash directed straight at the speakers and any hope of including the audience would be even more of a challenge with the dark surroundings acting like a massive sponge, mopping up the light. Although not a new situation for me, I spent years of my youth crawling around potholes and caves and of course working in darkrooms, these sort of challenges make you think on your feet.

With the male members of the panel being traditionally dressed in dark suits achieving definition between them and the background was essential if disembodied heads were to be avoided.

Add to this the large bottles of water sitting on the desk in front of the panellists just waiting to reflect back at me every bit of light I threw at them I was not optimistic about the outcome of the evening.

But with some careful balancing of apertures and shutter speeds to make the most of any light there was and some gentle manipulation in Photoshop, I achieved my goal.